Newman needs to capitalize

After winning the pole for today's Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway, Newman again was hoping to turn his one lap of speed into 500 miles of sustained speed.

So far, that's been difficult for Newman.

The pole on the 1.54-mile raceway was Newman's seventh of the year - and a sweep at Atlanta - and the 34th of his career. Only twice, however, has he turned a pole position into a victory.

A good run today (12:40 p.m., NBC) is important if he's going to make a late-season charge in the Chase for the Championship. He's third in the rankings, 63 points behind Tony Stewart and 48 behind second-place Jimmie Johnson.

"We're a one-car team going for one position," Newman said. "We'll see if we get it. Winning a couple of races would be awesome and that wouldn't even guarantee us the title. Winning a couple of races would be awesome for the team as well as our championship hopes. We may see a situation where all five of us in the top five finish in the top five in the last four races. You never know. Look what happened to Kurt Busch here a year ago. He blew an engine."

Newman said his position in the standings won't change the way he approaches today's race or any of the final four races of the season.

"We're going to approach the Final Four like we did the first 26 and the last six," he said. "We go out and do the best job we possibly can. The guys are doing a great job. We were the absolute underdogs after the first 26 races to be where we are now. It feels good. It feels especially good to get the win at Loudon. We've got to follow through. We can't just finish in the top five now. We've got to win races because the 20 (Stewart) and 48 (Johnson) are going to be tough going for their top fives."

Newman and his crew chief, Matt Borland, both have engineering degrees. That knowledge certainly has helped them during qualifying, but it has little to do with flat tires, crashes and engine failures that are part of the main event.

"I read somewhere about engineering in NASCAR, something that (NASCAR chairman) Brian France said that kind of upset me a little bit: He said something about engineering not being good for the sport. I was just curious where he stands on that and his education and if he understands how much engineering has helped our safety," Newman said.

"Matt (crew chief Borland) is good at understanding the race cars for sure. He's a team player. He's good to communicate with. His engineering degree relative to his experience is what makes our car run as well as it does. We speak the same language and talk about the same things in the same way, hopefully. It doesn't always work out that way. Having an engineering background definitely helps."

Almost famous

When Carl Edwards is in public with his girlfriend, she gets as much attention as him.

His girlfriend is Olympic gold medal swimmer Amanda Beard.

"It depends on where we are. If we go to the swimming pool, everyone walks right past me and they don't even notice me," Edwards said. "They go straight to her. But at the racetrack probably me. She's got some really neat stuff coming up on the horizon with some television stuff and things, so she'll probably get ahead of me pretty far here."

Off day

The Nextel Cup Series garage area was closed Saturday in preparation for today's race.

So what did drivers do?

"I'm going to watch college football all day," Elliott Sadler said.

Edwards made appearances for two sponsors, then a vintage World War II airplane belonging to car owner Jack Roush.

Newman probably found a quiet place to go fishing.

"It's a waste of time," he said. "Why not just come here for Saturday and Sunday? It's just a ridiculous waste of time, especially with our schedule."

Pit stop

Tony Raines will be named the primary driver for a new team owned by Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman, but it will come with a twist. Former series champion - and fellow Texan - Terry Labonte will drive the first five races so he can use his past champion's provisional exemption to make the starting lineup. That should help the team be ranked in the top 35 so it can get automatic exemptions to the rest of the starting grids.